Organization of Operation Reinhard

    The men were usually run through the tube first, since they represented the greatest security threat, should they figure out what was going on.

    At the end of the «tube» was the extermination area. It was composed of the gas chambers, burial pits or crematoria, and living quarters for the prisoners (Sonderkommando) who were forced to participate in the killings. These prisoners did not last very long — they were murdered on regular occasions and replaced. There were slight differences between the camps, but the general design was consistent throughout.

    Once the Jews had been run through the «tube», they came to the gas chambers. The gas chambers represented ordinary baths. Once here, the Jews were crammed into the gas chambers, and there was no longer any need for deception. Guards hit them with clubs and whips to force them the last few meters into the gas chamber. Once inside, the doors were sealed and the gas was introduced. Several descriptions of the gassing process survive and they all concord with the following observations by Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, a Waffen-SS hygienist, of a gassing at Belzec:

    [The Jews] ran naked from the hut through a hedge into the actual extermination centre. The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal delousing institution. In front of the building were pots of geraniums and a sign saying «Hackenholt Foundation», above which were a Star of David. The building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to suggest that people would be killed there. From what I saw, I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had any idea of what would happen to them.  

    Inside the building, the Jews had to enter chambers into which was channeled the exhaust of a [100(?)]-HP engine, located in the same building. In it, there were six such extermination chambers. They were windowless, had electric lights and two doors. One door led outside so that the bodies could be removed. [...] Once the engine was running, the light in the chambers was switched off. This was followed by palpable disquiet in the chamber. In my view it was only then that the people sensed something else was in store for them. [...] After about twelve minutes, it became silent in the chambers.

    It became silent because the Jews were all dead. 

Despoilment of the Dead

    Equally important as the killing of the Jews was the disposal of their bodies, since no trace could be left of them. At the same time, the Jews, even in death, were the object of a gruesome despoilment by their killers. The plunder included not only their valuables, but even their bodies.

    Once the Jews were dead, the gas chambers were opened and ventilated and the bodies removed through the back doors by Jews who were forced to assist in the operations. They were variously called Sonderkommando (Special Commandos) or Arbeitsjuden (Work Jews). Their job was to drag the bodies to the burial areas and there to bury them in large pits that were nearby. Before they were thrown in the pits, the bodies were searched for any hidden valuables, including the genital cavities. Dentists examined the mouths of the victims, looking for gold or silver teeth that were extracted with pliers. The horror of this is evidenced in the recollections of Jankiel Wiernik, one of the less than one hundred survivors of Treblinka:

    I was put with a group that was assigned to handle the corpses. The work was very hard, because we had to drag each corpse, in teams of two, for a distance of approximately three hundred meters [328 yards]. Sometimes we tied ropes around the dead bodies to pull them to their graves.

    Suddenly, I saw a live woman in the distance. She was entirely nude; she was young and beautiful, but there was demented look in her eyes. She was saying something to us, but we could not understand what she was saying and could not help her. She had wrapped herself in a bed sheet under which she was hiding a little child, and she was frantically looking for shelter. Just then one of the Germans saw her, ordered her to get into a ditch and shot her and the child. It was the first shooting I had ever seen.

    [...]

    We had to carry or drag the corpses on the run, since the slightest infraction of the rules meant a severe beating. The corpses had been lying around for some time and decomposition had already set in, making the air foul with the stench of decay.

    Sorting squads sorted and stacked the clothing that had been left behind. The hair that had been shorn from the victims was returned to Germany to make blankets for the Wehrmacht. So-called Goldjuden (Gold Jews) were responsible for sorting and packing valuables and foreign currency for remission to the Reichsbank. Clothing was disinfected and sent to Germany for reuse. Watches were often sent to the Wehrmacht for distribution to soldiers. Much jewelry and other precious materials were plundered. The Jews however had been disposed of.

     Concealment of the Dead

    The Jews were buried in large pits in the general location of the gas chambers, that is, in the extermination area of the camps. For a time, this sufficed. But eventually, the sheer volume of corpses, and the decaying process began to cause difficulties. First, there were so many bodies that the killers ran out of room. Bodies were stacked on top of each other, and covered with layers of lime or dirt. Eventually, the pits filled up, at which point they were covered with a final layer of dirt and another pit started. As the number of dead reached massive proportions, the available space was used up. The natural human decomposition process, in combination with the hot weather, caused the decaying bodies to swell up with gases, and expand, thus increasing their volume to the point where they began to cause the tops of the pits to move. They also emitted a terrible odor.

    At around the same time, the Nazis decided to obliterate the remains of the over one million people shot by the Einsatzgruppen. This task was entrusted to Standartenführer Paul Blobel, who had been commandant of an Einsatzkommando and now was assigned the task of disposing of the corpses of the dead - the so-called Enterdungsaktion. The code name for this was «Aktion 1005» and it involved the exhumation and burning of bodies in the Soviet Union and Poland. Blobel also supervised the burning of bodies at Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. The pits were doused with inflammable materials and the bodies burned down to the bottom of the pit. According to Blobel's affidavit, this sometimes took up to three days for each pit.

    In addition, at Treblinka at least, machines were used to crush the bones of the bodies so that no trace would be left. But it did not always work. Sixteen years later, in 1959, historian Martin Gilbert had the following experience on a visit to Treblinka:

    I stepped down from the cart on to the sandy soil; a soil that was gray rather than brown. Driven by I know not what impulse; I ran my hand through that soil, again and again. The earth beneath my feet was coarse and sharp: filled with fragments of human bone.

    In addition, excavations at all three extermination camps have found evidence of mass murder. 

Destruction of the Camps

    The three camps only operated for two years, from early 1942 until late 1943. They were taken down because, to put it simply, they had completed their work. The Jews of Poland had largely been annihilated, and the few that were left could now be dispatched to Auschwitz, which had the capacity to absorb them.

    Belzec was the first camp to be dismantled. The last gassings had taken place in December 1942, but it took until March 1943 to complete the cremation of the exhumed bodies. The camp was emptied and the last Jews transferred from there to Sobibor in July 1943. The gas chambers and all the other buildings were demolished. Trees were planted and a farm was built over the camp for a Ukrainian guard, who received a salary to maintain the place and live there with his family. One of the reasons a guard was required was to prevent the villagers of the surrounding towns from digging up the ground, in a macabre search for jewelry and valuables. Many of the personnel from Belzec were transferred to Sobibor and Treblinka.

    The second camp to disappear was Treblinka. Gassing operations ceased on August 19, 1943. In September 1943, Globocnik was promoted to Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and Police Leader) for Trieste in Italy and left with several of his men (Stangl and Wirth among others). Stangl was succeeded as commandant at Treblinka by Kurt Franz, who was given the job to dismantle and destroy the camp. This he did, assisted unwillingly by thirty Jewish prisoners. At the end of November, Franz and his men were transferred to Sobibor, after killing the remaining Jewish prisoners. Once again, a farm was built on the remains of the camp and once again, it was manned by a Ukrainian guard and his family.

    Sobibor was the last camp to be abandoned. There had been an uprising there in October 1943, after which most of the Jews who escaped, and the ones who did not, were shot. The thirty Jews mentioned above were brought to Sobibor and forced to carry out the dismantling activities. Once again, a farm was built over the remains of the camp. The few remaining Jews were murdered, and the SS personnel left the camp in December.

    The Operation Reinhard death camps had finished their murderous work. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Final Death Toll

    Although they operated for less than two years — from around March 1942 to December 1943 — the Operation Reinhard camps resulted in the death of as many as 1.7 million Jews. Exact numbers are difficult to determine, since the Germans destroyed all the records in an attempt to cover their tracks. Hilberg estimates the death toll at 1.5 million (Belzec: 550,000, Treblinka: 750,000 and Sobibor: 200,000), while Arad places it at 1.7 million (Belzec: 600-700,000, Treblinka: 763,000, Sobibor: 250,000). Martin Gilbert estimates the total at 1.69 million (Belzec: 600,000; Treblinka: 840,000; Sobibor: 250,000).

    Determination of a precise figure is complicated by the fact that almost all of the Operation Reinhard records were destroyed, so that researchers are obliged to use other sources and methods to estimate the numbers. For example, in the case of Belzec, Arad based his estimate on surviving German railroad records, ghetto censuses, and Judenrat records. He is able to detail deportations to Belzec that total about 519,392. Based on the known incompleteness of the records, he estimates the overall Belzec death toll to be at least 600,000.

    On the other hand, an Allied intercept of a telegram from Hermann Höfle to SS-Obersturmbannführer Heim, deputy commander of the Security Police and SD for the General Government in Cracow, contains a figure of 434,508 for Belzec as of December 31, 1942. This apparent contradiction may be explained by the fact that we are not sure as of what date Höfle's records began to be kept, or it could be that the Höfle records are more accurate, but the point is that it underscores the difficulty in capturing the exact numbers and the extent to which the Nazis succeeded in destroying their records.

    Be that as it may, there is no doubt that, along with Auschwitz and the Einsatzgruppen, the Operation Reinhard camps had effectively annihilated Polish Jewry. Overall, it is estimated that up to 3,000,000 of Poland's Jews, or 90%, perished in one way or another during the Final Solution. Polish Jewry has never recovered. Only about 10,000 Jews, most of them elderly, remained in Poland in 1991. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Plunder

    Having murdered the Jews, the Nazis saw no reason why they should not confiscate their valuables, and assign them to their own uses. An order dated September 26, 1942 from the SS Economic and Administration Head Office to Operation Reinhard headquarters in Lublin laid down precise guidelines. It detailed exactly to which agency any confiscated goods were to be sent. The list was exhaustive. It included amongst others things: all German money, all foreign money, rare metals, diamonds, precious stones, pearls, gold teeth, pieces of gold, watches, fountain pens, lead pencils, shaving utensils, pen knives, scissors, pocket flashlights, purses, men's clothing and underwear, women's clothing and underwear, feather bedding, blankets, umbrellas, baby carriages, handbags — the list is almost endless. It is noteworthy that it covers virtually every aspect of a person's existence. As described above, this necessitated the employment of teams of Jews, the so-called Arbeitsjuden or Work Jews, who were spared immediate execution by working in one of the many details that processed this material. This was the only «work» done in the Operation Reinhard camps, as opposed to camps such as Auschwitz.

    It is estimated that over one thousand railway cars of confiscated belongings left Treblinka alone. The overall estimate of the plunder of the Operation Reinhard camps defies comprehension. Various documents that survive include figures such as 270,000 kilograms (594,000 pounds or 297 tons) of bed feathers, 3,000 kilograms (6,600 pounds or 3 tons) of women's hair, and 262,000 complete men's and women's outfits. It is estimated that the total haul in currency and precious metals approaches RM 178,745,960.59 (Reichsmarks), or $71,200,000 at the existing rate of exchange. That works out to about $740,180,960 in 2002 dollars.

    It should be remembered that these totals do not include the materials stolen from the Jews by the SS at the camps. 
 

Aftermath and cover up

    Operation Reinhard ended in November 1943. Most of the staff and guards were then sent to northern Italy for further Aktion against Jews and local partisans. Globocnik went to the San Sabba concentration camp, where he supervised the detention, torture and killing of political prisoners.

    At the same time, to cover up the mass murder of more than two million people in Poland during Operation Reinhard, the Nazis implemented the secret Sonderaktion 1005, also called Aktion 1005 or Enterdungsaktion («exhumation action»). The operation, which began in 1942 and continued until the end of 1943, was designed to remove all traces that mass murder had been carried out. Leichenkommando («corpse units») were created from camp prisoners to exhume mass graves and cremate the buried bodies, using giant grills made from wood and railway tracks. Afterwards, bone fragments were ground up in specialized milling machines and all remains were then re-buried in freshly-dug pits. The Aktion was overseen by squads from the SD and Orpo.

    After the war, some guards were tried and sentenced at the Nuremberg Trials for their role in Operation Reinhard and Sonderaktion 1005; however, many others escaped justice. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Extermination camps

Belzec

    Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec, was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. Operating in 1942, the camp was situated in occupied Poland about half a mile south of the local railroad station of Bełżec in the Lublin district of the General Government.

    At least 434,500 Jews were killed at Bełżec, along with an unknown number of Poles and Roma; only one or two Jews are known to have survived Bełżec: Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman. The lack of survivors may be the reason why this camp is so little known despite its number of victims.

    

 

Treblinka

    Treblinka II was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II. Between July 1942 and October 1943, around 850,000 people were killed there, more than 800,000 of whom were Jews, including several thousand Gypsies and 2,000 Romani people. The camp was closed after a revolt during which a few Germans were killed and a small number of prisoners escaped. The nearby Treblinka I was a forced labour camp and administrative complex in support of the death camp. Treblinka I operated between 1941 and 1944. In this time half of the 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment. Treblinka I inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area.

      
 
 
 

                        
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

       
 
 
 
 
 

Sobibor

     Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp set up in the Lublin region of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. Jews, including Jewish Soviet prisoners of war (PoWs), and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibor by rail, and asphyxiated in gas chambers that were fed with the exhaust of a petrol engine. According to various estimates, between 200,000 and 250,000 people were killed at Sobibor.

    After a successful revolt on October 14, 1943 about half of the 500 prisoners in Sobibor escaped; the camp was closed and planted with trees days afterwards. A memorial and museum are at the site today.

    

    

     Sobibór is also the name of the village outside which the camp was built, which is now part of Lublin Voivodeship in Poland.

       

Majdanek

     Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army. Although conceived as a forced labor camp and not as an extermination camp, over 79,000 people died there (59,000 of them Polish Jews) during the 34 months of its operation.

    

     The name «Majdanek» («little Majdan») derives from the nearby Majdan Tatarski («Tartar Maidan») district of Lublin, and was given to the camp in 1941 by the locals, who were aware of its existence. In Nazi documents, and for reasons related to its funding, Majdanek was initially «Prisoner of War Camp of the Waffen-SS in Lublin». It was renamed «Konzentrationslager Lublin» (Concentration Camp Lublin) in February 1943.